Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday November 17, 2011 @06:05PM
from the play-nice dept.

bs0d3 writes "The EU Parliament has adopted, 'by a large majority,' a statement warning the US to refrain 'from unilateral measures to revoke IP addresses or domain names' due to the 'need to protect the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communications.' This resolution highlights both the practices prescribed in SOPA/PIPA... but also the actions of Homeland Security and ICE in seizing domain names. By adopting a resolution against domains seizures the European Parliament recognizes the dangerous precedent the pending SOPA legislation would set, and it wouldn't be a surprise if more foreign criticism follows. No country should have the ability to simply take over international domain names, and surely the US would feel the same if this plan was put in motion by a foreign country. Or as some 60 press freedom and human rights advocate groups put it in their letter to the US representatives: 'This is as unacceptable to the international community as it would be if a foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States.'"

As an EU citizen, I find US practices completely unacceptable. Even China doesn't try to restrict other countries. They do what they have to do inside their country, but they have never tried to block or manipulate other countries to do the same. Yet US has the balls and hypocrisy to accuse China about its censorship practices, as do most US citizens here on Slashdot.

US is much worse than China. They try to force their views and laws globally. They install their own law enforcement agents inside other countries in the name of "providing training" to manipulate. They revoke IP addresses and domains used by non-US people. They try to extradite people from other countries to jail them for years in US soil. Have you noticed that most of world has actually sane amount of years you have to spend in jail if you do something bad? In US the minimum seems to be at least 10 years. Usually you can go in for life. Sometimes several lifes. In most civilized countries, you're only going to be spending more than 10 years if you kill somebody. In the same way, the sentences are longer if you physically harm someone. Not for downloading a fucking song off the internet.

This doesn't even only apply to copyright laws. This is just common practice with everything. For example, in most of Asia and South America there was nothing wrong with using some drugs. That is, before US started their whole war on drugs thing and couldn't just keep it within it's own borders. They had to start going around the world telling people what to do. Don't you seriously have better things to spend money on, like fixing your damn problems first? Regardless, there is nothing wrong with smoking some pot. It's both more relaxing and healthy than alcohol, which causes several health problems in people (and makes some people really aggressive).

And yet, US acts all surprised when they are told to get the fuck out, after which they bring out the guns and start shooting people. US is the only country in the world that has been constantly in war with at least one country. Usually there is several enemies. The whole world would be much saner, happier and peaceful place without US.

I believe you. The problem with US citizens is that when they can cast their vote for the federal elections, there's a button "D" and a button "R" and, at least for privacy (PATRIOT) and intellectual property rights (MickeyMouse/DMCA/ACTA/E-PARASITE/SOPA) it makes no difference which one they press. The "D" and "R" agree as well that there should never be anything like proportional representation, ensuring the continued validity of their oligopoly.

Actually I've noticed that the number of people who disagree with US policies is increasing. Slowly, yes, but people who are out of work and have very little to do but actually pay attention to what is going on seem to be getting the picture.

As a US citizen, Believe me when I say that most other US citizens will agree with you....well, most sane ones. The number of which is rapidly dropping.

The number is dropping at a logarithmic rate. I almost got into a flamewar on FB with a person almost 40 years my junior who thought that censorship, by the government was not only good, but necessary to protect its citizens from the dangers of...she didn't actually say what, and she spelled coup (as in coup d'etat) as "Coo", and she states in her info page that she is a graduate of a university, having a degree in education.

First off, Jesus does not exist and if he did exist, do you think a guy nailed to a cross would cry for Americans who pollute the world and consume its resources and are to stupid to vote for Bush or anyone not Bush?

Thousands die of hunger and some beard in the sky is supposed to care for you?

I've never had a problem with idea that 2000 years ago a hippy Arab black guy called Jesus was walking around telling people to stop being a bunch of cunts to one another. I even agree with most of the stuff he thought made you a chilled out cool dude. I happy to believe that the Romans didn't like him much and nailed him up for it too. It's just the other bits that seem far far-fetched.

I don't hate America, but I do tend to hate its leadership. The two are distinctly different. Same with China--I don't doubt most of those billion citizens are great people who, language barriers aside, I'd be happy to be friends with. Same, indeed, with most nations that we're not politically aligned with.

If only the politicians, corporate officers, media moguls, etc, were the people in the trenches when the wars come.

As a US citizen, I also find these practices unacceptable. The current mentality of complete control by our government has gotten entirely too far out of hand in this country. I vote my conscience in every election, and I write letters and am as politically active as I can be while still holding down a job, but there's only so much I can do when so many of my fellow Americans are bound and determined to allow our own government to undermine everything that our country is supposed to stand for.

Actions like this by the EU are pretty much the last hope I have of something may give the US the wake up call that we so desperately need. Unfortunately, with the US's current extremely confrontational attitude, the only reaction that I can see is a bunch of angry griping about how the rest of the world just better shut up and stay out of our business. Still, I applaud the EU and anyone else that refuses to tow the US-mandated line.

I agree with the statement as well. The problem is that it doesn't matter how many people get upset. Our government is bought and paid for and normal citizens simply can't outbid corporations. The most ironic situation in my mind is in a few decades we have to overthrow our government and look to Europe for help.

1) Only Citizens capable of voting in an election can contribute to campaigns they are eligible to vote on.

2) PACs cannot donate to Campaigns to ELECTED offices.

3) Corporations cannot donate to Campaigns.

4) Unions cannot donate to Campaigns.

Corporations and Unions can run their own damn campaigns making it clear exactly where the $$ is coming from. Further, Corporations and Unions would be forbidden to form "PACs" for the purposes of obfuscating financing.

But I would also REVOKE all personal donation limits to campaigns, provided that they are from Citizens eligible to vote for those representatives. I'm NOT restricting Corporations or Unions from Political Speech, just making it clear that they have to run their own campaigns for the candidates they want to support, with clear notifications of who is sponsoring the campaigns.

Our Liberties have been watered down and diluted by Corporations and Unions making unrestricted contributions to political parties.

Every one of those suggestions makes a ton of sense (I may even borrow a few of them for future arguments) but we'll never see them applied. The goal of those in power is to retain that power, your proposal would threaten that.

Yeah, I've seen lots of great proposals like this over and over again by people here, Reddit, etc but none of it matters because those pieces of crap in Congress are never going to vote themselves into limiting the money train. I honestly think it would take open revolt for that to happen. I mean honestly...how are we going to get them to do this? How? I think that's the only reason most of those assholes are even in government in the first place.

Even cops act like human beings, compared to the US mentality of shooting first, asking questions later.
Yeah, police in the US shoot people a good 80-90% of the time that they make routine traffic stops.

The only thing you cannot do is try to get a gathering of millions of people to riot on streets.
Really? That's the only thing you can't do in China? So, you're suggesting that you can criticize the Chinese government online and have no pro

Have you seen the approval ratings of the U.S. Congress? They are abysmal and have been there for a very long time. This group does not represent its citizens, not by a longshot. This is an example of what happens when corporations corrupt a representative process.

This is why NO key element in the Internet Backbone should belong to any individual corporation or any individual country. The backlash against the UN owning them was, I think, a serious mistake by geeks. Assuming a benign (even relatively speaking) US is clearly bogus. Placing ownership completely outside of any nation is the best hope we have. True, the UN hasn't exactly been perfect, but it is the closest we have to a multinational system that special interests (including the special interests of specific national agencies) cannot readily control.

In and of itself, though, this is not sufficient. We'd have to move away from the spanning tree topology currently popular on the Internet (because it's cheap) and move to as close to a full mesh topology - even across international borders - as finances permit.

The first part makes overt control much more difficult. The second part makes covert control much more difficult. Without both, total control - including over other nations - remains a possibility. This MUST be stopped.

I do not believe that private corporations, who are slaves to profits, are capable of deploying such a mesh. It would be expensive and would eliminate the congestion problems they're using as excuses to hike rates, so they'd be spending more and earning less. Shareholders would never permit it. That means the Internet can only be run either by a quango (a semi-devolved agency, similar to the British BBC, where it runs independently via an established charter even though it is government-funded) OR by a non-profit group that also has core policy defined by charter but is funded by the userbase.

So a UN quango (ie: the UN can only negotiate and enforce the terms of the charter, and where it is legally obliged to pay the charter-defined amount annually, but the quango is otherwise politically outside of the UN) would be the logical solution. It would defeat nationalists usurping the Internet, it would prevent many of the problems feared when UN ownership has been talked of before, but the UN would be contractually obliged to provide any and all protections necessary to stop nations threatening other nations' usage.

I don't seriously expect to get a positive response to this, but I can honestly think of no other solution since everything else has been tried and been shown to be a disaster.

It's got a history of being run by competent technocrats who have been very good at what they do, it already does a great job of managing satellite orbits, radio spectrums and so forth.

Too many people when they hear "UN" think of the security council, or in the best case, the general assembly, but this is all but a minor facet of what the UN does.

I'm not keen on all UN organisations, I think the WHO is largely incompetent, their handling of the swine flu situation amounted to little more than over the top fear mongering not based on solid science. The WTO is a proxy for the US to try and control global trade to it's advantage hence why it always ignores rulings against it whilst it pressures others to join and adhere to rulings in it's favour, and the world bank is less than stellar.

But the ITU, IMO, UPU, UNESCO, ICAO, IAEA, are very good at what they do, governed largely by experts in the field in question who actually know what the fuck they're on about rather than career politicians. WIPO was very good in making sure IP was fair until America screwed it for the WTO because WIPO wasn't working in America's favour (i.e. strong copyright and patents that we now have today). The International Criminal Court would be an excellent addition to the UN family of competent organisations, but struggles to get support because America wont sign up to it, presumably due to the fear of having the likes of George Bush held to account, and African nations are failing to honour their obligations to it claiming it's biased against Africa, seemingly missing all the European ex-Yugoslav and ex-Nazi war criminals it's dealt with, but then, if Africa stopped producing more war criminals than any other continent too then yes there'd probably be less focus on it also.

Browsing through the discussion, saw your sig, started to read the post. Saw this line:

We'd have to move away from the spanning tree topology currently popular on the Internet (because it's cheap) and move to as close to a full mesh topology

Thought to myself, holy crap -- this guy really knows his shit. That's why I started looking into the mesh networks they've building with bailing wire and twine in Africa. So I look up at the header, and see you've got me by a whole order of magnitude in the account numb

It is to avoid "legislation and regulation" that I suggested it should be a quango under charter from the UN and not run by the UN itself. This eliminates the apparent contradiction as well, since a chartered body would be protected from retaliation by the UN but would not be subservient to the UN. Quangos are different from agencies in the same way that the BBC is not a British government department. WIPO is as much our fault as geeks as it is the fault of the lobbyists who run it -- a world body was inevi

That's a little hard when ICANN and Verisign (the company that handles.com.net and even some other countries TLD's) are US companies, don't you think?

But your idea is good, in a way. We just need to move the control out of US. We should have done so ages ago. Move what ICANN and the global TLD's under some new body that only has certain established rules and doesn't mandate any single country's laws to their policies. Or move them under United Nations.

US can keep their.us TLD, which is the actual TLD given to United States.

Moving them to the United Nations doesn't solve or prevent anything, but the concept is good.

Since these corporations need to be somewhere, it will never be about where they are, it will always be about sanity in managing these core Internet functions. And that means dealing with governments, and we Americans need to once again shower our representatives with enlightened advice, as in 'don't DO that!!!'.

Seriously, I have to get my reps' addresses out ahd hit them with informative emails, pointing out that

Who are the US troops protecting us from? The 9,000 or so that are based in the UK are not needed for any defence as we have nearly 200,000 of our own, not to mention a navy and an air force, and, despite what 14 year old American zitbags think, we have nuclear weapons. Now if we were living in 1971 you might have a point, but it was as much in the interests of the USA to keep its major export market out of enemy hands as it was for us to be kept out of the Warsaw Pact.

Supporting conservative religious factions in Germany had managed to pacify the country after WWII, it had been a reasonable thing to try, but it obviously doesn't work well with Islam.

Or with South Americans, it seems. Actually it never really worked. Sure, short terms goals are very important, but that all becomes rather stupid when it blows up in your (literally) face a generation down the line. Our bullshit in South America was worse, since we subverted democratically elected governments to install tyrants, just so they'd play better with American corporations (oh, and we must stop those damn leftists, at any cost!). All of this blew up in our faces to, nicely.

I was in college during Tiananmen Square. Chinese students studying in America were persecuted for things they said on the internet here once they got back home.

China was monitoring US internet communication back in 1989?

Other countries do that to. US forces are trained by foreign countries at the Center on Global Counterterrorism.

CGCC is not another country. It is an American "research and policy institute".

And a government hiring private instructors to train its law enforcement/military is not the same thing as should that government provide its own law enforcement or military as "advisers" to other governments or forces within other countries.One of those is a public act well within the domain of any government.The other thing is usually the result of a government trying to wage a secretive war without getting its hands dirty or without the consent of its people.

In all fairness the US is essentially policing the world right now. It is not exactly an even comparison.

Well, you're right about that. No other country in the world could dream of reaching USA's score. [wikipedia.org]

Not that often.

And why should they? When they can simply "render" them. Extraordinarily. [wikipedia.org]

And generally the country that the people are being extradited from is glad for the US taking the case.

I guess it's pointless to argue with people like you, you might be a little bit upset perhaps, but your claims are all more or less unfounded.

The EU is more than capable in many respects, however it currently lacks a [full] military arm [which will eventually replace NATO]. The Eurocorps [wikipedia.org] is changing that.

The EU has taken charge of military missions using European national forces in Europe, Africa and not least the naval operations outside Somalia in the Indian Ocean. I would love to see [my]Europe leave NATO, never again aiding the US

To accuse Europe of not being capable is both laughable and imprecise, there is no "Europe" as such to accuse. We will see in the future however as the EU consolidates. NATO has been the foundation of both American and European operations. You fight your wars with our help, not just the other way around. Despite your [increasingly invalid] superiority complex and extreme nationalism, you're not actually protecting Europeans at all, just your own interests. How exactly does the Ramstein Air Base protect Germany? Why are Europeans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan?!

It's ironic that you dare to speak about nationalism and facism, your country is the prime representative of both at this point in time! Oh, and you're awfully good at both genocides and apartheid. Your own history is far from respectable. And if we're to be blamed for past mistakes we also take full credit for Democracy, Magna Carta and the Republic!

The NATO committments you referred to are not exactly in our best interest. What possible reason do we have for spending a fixed percentage on non-essentials? The Cold War is over, that threat has passed, the need for arms has changed for Europe. The US uses its arms for other less admirable goals than promoting peace!

Why should we care about your strategic and economic goals? Defending Israel and other dicators (from Egypt to Saudi Arabia)! We should use our[European] armed forces and funds on other fronts such as border patrols, anti-terrorism and rapid reaction forces.

Europe (EU) is at peace for now, but our neighbors are not (see the Middle East, ex-Soviets and Africa). That's what we should care about!

This is not so-called anti-Americanism, that passed decades ago. The US isn't even remotely on the agenda in Europe in general. Why would we hate you? The EU is actually a lot more "hated" by people than your irrelevant foreign government. I think you're an old man, stuck in the past.

The Libyan operation is testament to Europe's growing self-confidence and ability. The French lead those attacks on Libya, joined by the British, before the US even acted! That's despite the lack of NATO and EU support.

At least you are correct when you claimed that what's going on is exactly what some European nations did in the past; playing The Great Game. The empires of Britain, Spain and France fell, and the American empire will also fall...

I'm glad being a US citizen gives me the right to say just about anything I want. Europe doesn't provide you with those same protections. If you think it does trying saying the Holocaust didn't happen in Holland, or wear a Nazi symbol in Germany

Do you really think that after WWII the European countries would not have fallen to communism one-by-one if the US had not had a presence in Europe?

I think that's too vague and bold of a statement to presume to be true. Sure, you could argue it. In fact, you could have a really long debate about it, and maybe come out with a strong probability of it being correct. But to really know the answer to that, to even get to that point of strong probability, you'd need to become an expert in many fields: history of the time, economics, military theory, etc. It's way too broad to make that statement as if it were a foregone conclusion.

Voting is such an interesting thing. In DPRK, 99% vote for Kim. In Belarus, 80% vote for Lukashenko.

Yeah, yeah, U.S. is a democracy. But its voting system is fucked up. It's pretty silly to think that election results represent the opinion of the population on a particular matter in any meaningful way - at best, they show the the average position on a very vague liberal/conservative scale.

I don't know. I mean, sure there are lots of great advantages in the eu compared to the us, like not locking up such large proportions of poor darker skinned people, not such a deep and wide economic chasm dividing the people, vacation, health care... And now recently also this freedom thing...

I'm kind of surprised about this. Maybe everything in the halls of power in Europe hasn't turned completely to shit just yet. If it isn't just posturing, then great, but I won't get my hopes up about a non-retarded world to live in.

Were headed for the same authoritarian privatized stratification. The same ideology with the same bizarrely rich people on top is shaping our world too. We're just a bit behind due to some legacy cruft in our culture and politics.

For all the ills of Europe, they seem to have a pretty good grip on freedoms which are eroding in USA and Australia.

Yes, because there certainly is no need for anyone to be able to discuss the National Socialist Party or any recent revivals of same anywhere in Europe, or to allow discussion of the founder of Islam, or any such stuff that we can do over here. Certainly no need for that at all. And God knows that British bans on info on celebrities are certainly required in these uncertain times.

Only Germany forbids Nazi symbols by law (gee, I wonder why?) and the Danish government, along with most other EU governments, reacted with indignation when radical islamists when crazy over some cartoons. Yes, super injunctions here in the UK are stupid. So stupid that one of our own MPs scuppered one in Parliament to prove a point. The US does not have a monopoly on freedom.

We've lost. The Republicans in Congress will get their panties in a bunch and insist on passing this bill, even if they might have been convinced otherwise before. They simply can't have it appear that they're taking orders or even advice from Europe.

I believe you're referring to section 47, which as you point out is entirely optional for member states and says things such as:

Mechanisms may also be put in place to block access from the Union's territory to internet pages identified as containing or disseminating child pornography. The measures undertaken by Member States in accordance with this Directive in order to remove or, where appropriate, block websites containing child pornography could be based on various types of public action, such as legislative, non-legislative, judicial or other.

Emphasis mine.

Whichever basis for action or method is chosen, Member States should ensure that it provides an adequate level of legal certainty and predictability to users and service providers.

Any such developments must take account of the rights of the end users and comply with existing legal and judicial procedures and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

It's not quite the same thing is what SOPA is proposing to do now, is it.

Not really. The EU is slamming the US for proposing a law that includes censorship of other countries by way of a unilateral decision that "if we can access it from the US and it's technically possible to shut it down, we're allowed to" and the conditions under which SOPA would "allow" this are so vague as to be applicable to just about any site that they want it to.

The EU directive in question permits member states to block access to sites containing child pornography for their own citizens if they so choose.

I'm not saying that the EU is inherently right in what this directive permits or forbids, but to say that the two things are comparable is seriously misstating the situation.

The key difference is that censorship laws enacted by a democratic state against its own populace are there - presumably - with the consent of said populace, and can be repealed through the usual democratic procedures (elections etc). On the other hand, when censorship applied by one country against another, the citizens of that latter country have no recourse.

I believe you're referring to section 47, which as you point out is entirely optional for member states and says things such as:

You need a refresher on european politics. Here's how it works:

Government A wants to do evil things to its citizens. It goes ahead and tries, and gets a bloody nose (mass protests, law thrown out by highest court for being unconstitutional, whatever). Don't for a second think they give up. Next step is secret backroom talks and then a law passed on the EU level. A couple years later, they come back with the original idea on the national level, now claiming that even though they really, really don't want to,

US tries to censorship other countries. That EU thing would only optionally allow blocking child porn inside their own countries, and puts serious legal limitations on it. Two completely different things.

To be honest if the US want to put up a firewall that stops me being able to view content in the US or people in the US from viewing content from without I don't care. If the US choose to manipulate DNS registries to stop me in Europe being able to view content housed in Europe then I have serious issues with that. That people either can't, or won't, see a difference between the two doesn't surprise me it does sadden me though. It shows that reason has been lost to the world.

Ostensible protection of children is used to justify all kinds of unjust violations of freedom and privacy, and many such violations actually don't do much if anything to make children safer.

If you want someone to gladly become your slave, just insist that you are taking control of their lives "to protect the children" (whether that is true or not).

Here is a good quote on the subject:

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."

Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."

--Mein kampf, Adolf Hitler.

That quote does not appear anywhere in Mein Kampf. It was made up, probably by some random guy on the internet.

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."

Those images of the cartel's victims being brutally tortured and having their genitals shoved in their mouth and lit on fire didn't have a choice either, but it isn't illegal. What's the difference. Why should any arbitrarily large of number be illegal?

Besides that, [your] GP said animated, as in animated, as in it isn't real anyway.

The EU parliament can call for policies that make sense... because they know nobody is listening to them.

"EU parliament" sounds great, but in reality countries have not ceded sovereignity to it. What really counts are the agreements between the presidents and PM, who are the ones that can push the agreements into their countries. The EU parliament is some sort of golden elephany graveyard (no longer popular politics are sent there to keep them happy and quiet).

There are several such projects, but nothing will ever come out of them because casual people just won't make the switch. That is why people need to demand that governments don't start censoring the internet, and tell them it's acceptable practice.

I think this is a sign that DNS needs getting replaced with a non-centralized system.

Is there anybody working on such a thing?

Good luck with that. This is an industry that hasn't replaced IPv4 despite 15 years of warnings. An industry in which horrifyingly broken and insecure protocols such as SMTP and FTP are still ubiquitous. Once something is widely deployed, it basically cannot be changed, or only changed over the span of decades.

In theory there doesn't need to be any work. Someone just needs to do it. Anyone can run a DNS and those DNSes can have any policy. I already use Google's DNS as a backup DNS. There are a whole network of anti-censorship tools in place for countries with internet censorship. That's done and easy.

The problem is getting hundreds of millions of Americans to use them. Things like my iPhone don't even give me the option of setting up a secondary DNS.

Since DNS servers request from other DNS servers (and there can be multiple of those), individuals don't have to have secondary DNS. Anybody running a DNS server can add hooks into a parallel DNS tree. Which is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of the system. DNS owners who are corrupt or hostile can link into shadow DNS trees that contain fake entries. So long as the shadow tree has its own DNSSec keys, DNS won't notice any difference at all. Equally, DNS owners who are benign can do exactly the same thing, only pointing to DNS trees containing validated and "good" entries. Essentially undetectable.

Then those hundreds of millions of Americans would see everything in the shadow trees and never know that they were looking into the shadows.

Authorities trying to track down where the shadows lie (outside of Mordor) will need to invent a traceroute for the DNS protocol and had better hope all DNS servers (a) respond to it, and (b) always pass such packets to the shadow realms (a bloody stupid thing to do). Otherwise, the link(s) into the other tree(s) could be almost anywhere.

I wrote my senators and representative, and told them I oppose SOPA and PIPA. It may not be much, but it is worth it and it is ridiculously easy now that they have websites that accept messages.

Have you voiced your opinion, other than on some website that the policy makes never see?

You mean like their website that accepts messages, which they never read? No, not really. That would require effort.

I swear, I've sent one of my state senators an email saying how opposed I was to a bill and I got a form letter back saying, 'Thank you, I agree that that this issue is of vital national importance and will do everything in my power to see this legislation passed.'

They don't read those. Nobody in the senate actually reads their email. Go out and vote for third party candidates. They pay attention to polls.

And yes they are, " what you are doing is wrong, do this instead" really is telling someone what to do. Not that they can enforce it of cousre, but they are telling us what they think we should be doing.

And yes they are, " what you are doing is wrong, do this instead" really is telling someone what to do. Not that they can enforce it of cousre, but they are telling us what they think we should be doing.

Internet access [wikipedia.org] is a officially recognized human right in some European countries, and the UN is moving in that direction as well.

You can say you don't agree with that, but then don't go complaining when countries you believe are violating human rights tell you they don't recognize your pet right as a human right.

but if you think you have the right to tell another sovereign nation what they can and cant do like this

Surely you are saying this in a tongue in cheek manner? The bill is behind this which is from the US does exactly what you say. It effectively kills a website off the internet because the US doesn't like it. At least all the other "Great Firewall" countries have the decency to only kill it off for their own countries. Do you really think that it is okay for the US to vanish a website hosted in another country, under a.com or.net TLD (which has nothing to do with the US) just because a judge in the US says it is okay? Can you really be that hypocritical?

It was only a few years ago that the US was complaining that the Voice of America broadcasts were banned via jamming in Cuba and Ethiopia, let alone the many years of jamming under the Iron Curtain. The EU is aware of the slippery slope, once you start blocking copyright stuff then they'll move on to politically undesirable stuff. The Bush administration actively worked to block Al Jazeera, for example.

Stop imposing illiberal legislation on people who never voted for it! That's OUR job!

Don't worry too much about it. The EU in its present form cannot survive at all. I'm all for European integration (which is unusual for a Brit) but the EU is a failed project whose bureaucratic nervous system is too sluggish to have told its brain that it is already dead. Its proclaimations should be taken as seriously as those made by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in 1990.

Why does the fall of empires have to be a bad thing? Some people think the fall of the Roman Empire was bad - but the most immediate consequence for people living in Europe in the time was fewer legions pointing swords at them demanding tribute.

but the most immediate consequence for people living in Europe in the time was fewer legions pointing swords at them demanding tribute.

Actually, the most immediate consequence for people living within the Roman Empire was marauding hordes of barbarians burning down your village.

The "dark ages" aren't called that because sunspots made things dim for a couple hundred years. The amount of knowledge and skills lost was unbelievable. For several hundred years, old roman roads, despite not being maintained anymore and becoming more and more broken, were the best roads in all of Europe, because nobody knew how to make something like that. We're not talking pyramids here, we're talking about roads.

The world was a much different place back then. Knowledge as we know it was an unfamiliar concept. Knowledge was guarded and uncommon. Few people knew much about anything outside their own profession. Books were rare and valuable. If the US would be entirely destroyed by, say, a sudden eruption of the Yellowstone volcano, most of the knowledge would be preserved because copies of it exist in other places.

That's a relatively new thing. Less than a thousand years ago, any catastrophy that wipes out a civilization or any fall of an empire usually took most if not all of its knowledge down with it.

Of course, the USA having control over general domains like.edu could be debated -- do they have the right to provide American universities with a TLD, then force non-American universities to fend for themselves? Why do they have a similar monopoly over domains like.gov? Why, indeed, do domains like gov exist? A better approach would be *.gov.us for US government sites. The only arguments I have ever heard are "because they got there first" and "because they can", neither of which are remotely valid.

> The.COM TLD is managed by the US according to US rules because the US created it.The US rule you are talking about is RFC920. RFC 920 is an official DARPA document: "This is an official policy statement of the IAB and the DARPA."

It explicitely has an international scope. It lays the rules for registering a second level domain in.com and does not restrict it to US companies.While at that time almost all ARPANET nodes where in the US (European nodes have been part of the network since 1972), that does not mean that it was intended to stay that way.

Otherwise it would not have made much sense to specify.us and.de domains in RFC 920.

The ".com" domain is the domain for US commercial entities; there is no other. Because the US is fairly laissez-faire about it, a lot of foreign registrants have been able to get.com domains, but that doesn't make the TLD "international".

Europe has jurisdiction over.eu,.fr,.de, and other TLDs. The US has jurisdiction over.com,.edu,.org,..net and a few others.

Why on earth is this +4 Insightful? This is the sort of information that most/.'ers mock Fox News for. Seriously.

The TLD for the US is *gasp*.us - unsurprisingly similar to just about any other TLD suffix denoting a particular country. Spend 5 seconds researching something before modding this rubbish up.